


the ruin of a love story

by blamethenargless



Series: Catradora Week 2018 [6]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/F, Fate & Destiny, Good and Evil, Love, Outside Point of View, POV Outsider, Story within a Story, moral complexity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 13:16:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17305289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blamethenargless/pseuds/blamethenargless
Summary: Destiny can’t control everything, and she thinks that setting Adora-Queen and Catra-King against each other will destroy the string of love she’s tied them up in.She is sorely, sorely wrong.orA young immortal learns the shades of gray that cover the love story of Catra and Adora.





	the ruin of a love story

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is my first time writing in this outside PoV style, so go easy on me please. This is my submission for day 6 of Catradora Week 2018. As always, everything belongs to the creators. Enjoy!

Her name is Destiny, and she is very young. How young, exactly, she is not sure—probably only a few centuries at the oldest—but she does know that she is a crafter of Fate, and she will be one for the rest of her immortal existence. 

And Fate, of course, is her mother. Is all of their mothers—Destiny, Chance, Providence, Fortune, Future, and all the other daughters and sisters that weave the strings of life and arrange the way of all things.

Life, Destiny thinks, is one glorious chess game that ends in one side’s failure and another’s victory. And Destiny, young as she is, sees in the black-and-white squares that make up the game. So she sits herself at her board every day, and makes her moves. Sometimes they are rash, without foresight, and sometimes she messes everything up. Sometimes they are well-planned, wreaking havoc in a war or guiding a prince to his princess. And sometimes, Destiny thinks, sometimes there is a higher power still who guides her hands and moves her fingers to the esoteric tune of sheer dumb luck.

So far, young Destiny has only played a few games. She is a novice, and she sometimes leaves her game unattended. Fate guides her—her soft hands are welcome on Destiny’s shoulders, her matronly guidance greatly needed at each wrong turn—and sometimes Fate likes to take over. That’s alright, though. Destiny is still figuring things out.

When one game ends, another begins. When one battle is lost, another is just beginning. When Destiny ruins one future, she blesses another. And in the case of the game of Catra and Adora, Destiny faces her first stalemate.

The game starts simple—a sword-shaped Pawn landing in the blonde Queen’s hand. The Queen rushes across to the other side of the board, Pawn glued to her side, and converts that sword into power. She meets a tall, optimistic Rook, and a spunky, purple-haired Knight. And in her journey, she leaves her King behind.

The King is a guarded girl, protected by a wall of falsified emotion and long-forgotten wishes. She moves slowly, surely, but sometimes, Destiny cheats the rules and has the King take leaps and bounds in her pursuit of the Queen. Rash moves. Foolish moves.

Destiny is young, idealistic. And isn’t a love story such a fantastic way to ruin a game?

Her fingers tremble as she turns a Pawn on the King. The Pawn has magic, she decides, and imbues her with anger and such a tragic story she thinks that surely she must be creative beyond her years. She regrets it when the Pawn strikes the King, again and again and again, and beats her down into a desolate and broken piece of wood.

Still, a King ranks higher than a Pawn, and Destiny knows that in the end, a Pawn will be sacrificed. A King is far more important.

Adora-Queen meets another Queen on the other side. She’s the Knight’s mother, and Destiny moves her with more care and patience than she moves the other pieces. Perhaps Destiny models this Queen after her own mother, Fate. Perhaps she hopes this Queen can lead her side valiantly. But, of course, a Knight and a Rook must fight on the frontlines, so she pushes them towards the too-young King.

Light and Dark. One side versus another. An evil Pawn beats against her own King, and Destiny thinks she must even the odds, so she has Angella-Queen quarrel with Glimmer-Knight. It’s only fair. And, again, Destiny thinks in such binary ways.

Which is why she doesn’t foresee her pieces growing thoughts of their own. Destiny has needs—she eats, she sleeps, she takes breaks from her game to rest her eyes. She literally has all the time in the world.

Her pieces don’t, though. They’re on a time limit, and breakable, and oh-so emotional. Destiny makes the mistake of youth and thinks her self omnipotent. She isn’t. Destiny can’t control everything, and she thinks that setting Adora-Queen and Catra-King against each other will destroy the string of love she’s tied them up in.

She is sorely, sorely wrong.

Destiny tries to separate them as best she can. She starts a war—a  _ war _ , just so that she can keep her head held high and push aside any foolish notions that these tiny mortals could sway her power, sway her guiding hand.

But that’s all her hand is—guiding. She sets the pieces into place, but she cannot force a checkmate. She cannot force a romance like this to end. She can change the tides and cause natural disasters and fell an army with the flick of a finger, but she cannot undo the thread that runs deep between Adora-Queen and Catra-King, and each of her attempts just bind them tighter in this unescapable Destiny of hers. Of theirs.

And, at some point, Destiny thinks that maybe, some things truly are meant to be. Some things truly can’t be controlled. Some things will remain true forever, and that maybe she should start playing her little games in shades of gray.

So she knocks down that Shadow-Pawn, and she pushes that Angella-Queen to the frontlines alongside her daugher-Knight.

She turns her chess game into a battlefield, and the white squares run a deep crimson. Destiny is in charge—Destiny can control things as trite as war. She makes the fight long, because a long game requires strategy and strategy keeps her interested.

In the end, she brings Adora-Queen and Catra-King face to face.

And then she leaves her game and leaves them to sort out the rest for themselves. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos/Comments always appreciated :)


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